Queensland has now
produced a landmark
report that shows 20 years
of satellite monitoring
of tree clearing.
If you look at
the average, 91% of
all tree clearing has been
clearing for livestock.

Greetings,
eco-conscious viewers,
and welcome to
Planet Earth:
Our Loving Home.
On this week’s program
Australian scientists
Gerard Bisshop and
Dr. Clive McAlpine
will discuss the severe
environmental damage
inflicted by livestock
raising on our world,
most notably deforestation
and climate change.

Mr. Bisshop recently
retired from a position as
a remote-sensing scientist
with the Statewide
Land-cover and Trees
Study (SLATS) group
mapping vegetation
cover and tree-clearing
rates across the state of
Queensland, Australia.
The group has published
a landmark report tracing
20 years of deforestation
in Queensland.

In addition to his work
on the SLATS report,
Mr. Bisshop recently
co-wrote a paper
on the extremely
harmful environmental
and climatic effects
of livestock grazing.
The study will be
presented at
the Biennial Conference
of the Australian
Association of
Environmental Education
in September 2010.

What we looked at
was the common cause
for land degradation,
soil degradation, soil loss,
biodiversity loss; that
is trees and plants and
animals being extinct.
And loss of forests;
that is deforestation.
The common cause,
in fact causing 91%
of that is land clearing
for raising livestock.

Dr. McAlpine,
an Associate Professor in
the School of Geography,
Planning and
Environmental Management
at The University of
Queensland, Australia
is lead author of a paper
that concludes that
beef consumption is
the cause of serious
environmental injury
to the planet and a driver
of climate change.
The study was published
last year in the
interdisciplinary journal
“Global Environmental
Change: Human
and Policy Dimensions.”

I have been researching
here since 1998 on
various issues relating to
environmental change,
especially land clearing
and its impacts
on biodiversity and
climate in Australia.

I have three
main research interests:
The first is
the conservation of
biodiversity in human-
modified landscapes;
agricultural areas
in particular but also
in urban regions.
I’ve done a lot of work
on koala conservation
and also other
mammal species, gliders,
kangaroos
and more recently
on birds and reptiles.

My other main area of
research is the effects of
land cover change
and land use change
related to deforestation
in particular, on climate
in Australia and globally,
and how that applies
to climate policy.

According to research
conducted by
Dr. Clive McAlpine,
Gerard Bisshop and
their colleagues,
livestock grazing is
the main cause of
deforestation in Australia
and an array of other
environmentally
devastating phenomena.

For the past 16years
my group (SLATS)
has been involved in
mapping and monitoring
tree clearing.
This has involved
field trips to
ascertain on the ground
what is happening
as well as examining
the satellite imagery.
Satellite imagery tells us
there has been a change
in the vegetation
but we need to test it
on the ground to see
what exactly
that change has been.

And they attribute that to
either livestock grazing
or to mining,
urban expansion,
forestry activities
and other agriculture
like crops, but in that
20-year report 91%, fully
91% of that tree clearing
was for grazing animals.

Sometimes they’re
tree clearing where they
use two large bulldozers
pulling a chain
between them and
they just clear the trees,
pull the trees over and
leave them lying
on the ground or they
might use bulldozers
to break them
and burn them in a pile.
Or they might inject
the trees with poison,
they call that
stem injections
to kill the trees.
Or they might use
aerial poison to poison
the trees from an aircraft.
All of these kill the trees
so that grass can grow
to feed the livestock.

As Dr. McAlpine
explains, tree clearing
has had an enormously
negative impact
on biodiversity.

When you look at
landscapes like
in Western Australia,
South-west
Western Australia,
New South Wales
and Victoria and then
in Queensland, that
amounts to some areas
having less than 10%,
or even 5% native
vegetation remaining.
So there’s very extensive
clearing in those areas,
and that’s had major
impacts on biodiversity
and also for
catchment hydrology and
for feedbacks on climate.

The other changes in the
other parts of Australia
are not as obvious
but there’s also some
quite significant changes
in terms of grazing
impacts on ecosystems
and land degradation
that don’t involve direct
clearing of the land but
do change ecosystems
and biodiversity in
the process of occurring.
So those two combined
have had a very
significant impact on
Australia’s environment.

The major decline
in species in Australia
has been
in Australia’s mammals,
where approximately
20 mammal species
have gone extinct since
European settlement.
Attributing all of that to
land clearing is difficult.
I think there are
multiple causes there,
one is grazing,
changes in fire regimes,
introduction of
exotic predators, and
that’s occurred in the
arid zone in south-west
Western Australia and
in western Queensland
and New South Wales
and into Victoria.

Birds are now
in serious trouble
in south-east Australia,
through habitat loss
and also more recently
drought, which is
starting to have
an impact on resources
available for birds.

But other species like
the koala which I’ve done
my research on, and
they’re starting to decline
quite rapidly and
especially in the urban
coastal regions of
Queensland and
New South Wales,
and there are some really
serious concerns there
about koalas.

But even in western areas,
in western rangelands
where we’re working,
koalas are also declining,
and we attribute that
to land clearing, and to
drought and heat waves.
Koalas are very sensitive
to hot, dry weather, and
where they suffer heat
and moisture stress.

When we return
we’ll learn more about
the environmental
and climatic destruction
caused by tree clearing
for livestock raising.
Please stay tuned to
Supreme Master
Television.

Welcome back to
Planet Earth:
Our Loving Home
featuring two
highly knowledgeable
environmental scientists
from Australia,
Dr. Clive McAlpine
and Gerard Bisshop.
In his paper
“Increasing world
consumption of beef
as a driver of regional
and global change:
A call for policy action
based on evidence from
Queensland (Australia),
Colombia and Brazil,”
Dr. McAlpine
examines the effects of
deforestation on
climate variability
at both the regional
and global levels.

The main cause of
global climate change
is the increase in
atmospheric concentration
of greenhouse gases,
especially CO2
but also methane,
and nitrous oxide.
And we highlighted those
three gases which are
either emitted directly
from cattle,
for example, methane or
through the conversion of
native forests to pastures,
which releases the CO2
back into the atmosphere.

So, the other process
which we also highlighted
in some other papers
is that the clearing of
the land actually changes
the hydrological cycle
and also
the energy balance of
landscapes so that
you are getting
more, essentially heat
radiated back from
the land surface and
that’s changing the
atmospheric processes
and you’re also reducing
the amount of moisture
that is recycled back in
the atmosphere by trees.

It's estimated that
native forests can recycle
up to 20% of the moisture
back into the atmosphere,
which is then used to
form clouds, etc.
So, that impact is
more important
at a regional scale than
it is at a global scale.

In the same paper
Dr. McAlpine and
his colleagues propose
the following policy
measures to address the
hugely adverse regional
and global impacts
of the beef industry:

1. Stop subsidizing
beef production
and promoting
beef consumption;
2. Control future
expansion of soybeans
and extensive grazing to
halt deforestation and
savanna conversion;
3. Strategic protection
and restoration of
re-growth forests; and
4. Resources allocated
to ecologically sensitive
alternative land uses.
Following
from the first measure,
Dr. McAlpine
also discusses
concentrated animal
feeding operations
in the paper and
why they are also
squarely responsible
for accelerating
climate change.

I think when you look at
the greenhouse gases
coming out of feedlots,
they’ve got high levels
of methane
coming from the cattle.
They’re also very high
in nitrous oxide, which
gets into the water table.

Regarding the other
measures, Dr. McAlpine
further explains:

Just following on
from the other points
in that paper,
it's really critical that
we put in really strong
strategies now to stop
deforestation in regions
such as the Amazon,
but, you know also in
Southeast Asia and
in Africa where there’s
increasing pressures
on forests.
We need to do that now
if we’re going to
start mitigating
climate change.

Conservation of
native forests is critical
in that strategy but
we also need to protect
these re-growth forests
because they have
an important
environmental benefit
both from greenhouse
gases and also
for biodiversity and
for these sorts of
biophysical feedbacks
from the land surface
and the climate.

As Dr. McAlpine asserts,
it is vitally important to
allow for the re-growth
of forests and
for grazing lands to
revert back to
their native vegetation.
But what about
tree-planting initiatives
to sequester carbon?
Are they having
the desired effect?
Mr. Bisshop explains.

Tree clearing and
reforestation are
very interesting subjects
in Australia.
The average tree clearing
now in Australia is
about 100,000- 200,000
hectares per year.
This is even now
with tighter government
controls on tree clearing.
The average area of
planting is about
5,000 hectares per year.

So, that planting is
a combination of
planting to offset
carbon emissions,
it’s environmental
planting to reforest
rivers and streams and
its forestry planting
on properties,
on private properties.
But the combination
of all those together
is not even one percent
of the tree clearing.

It’s abundantly clear
from numerous
scientific studies and
research bodies that
halting animal agriculture
and adopting
the plant-based diet
will enable us to regain
environmental
and climatic stability.
When asked about
the recent report
by the United Nations
Environmental Programme
urging the world to
quickly move away
from consuming
animal products
to avoid the
frightening consequences
of climate change,
Dr. McAlpine responded:

Yes, I would support that.
We also need to look at
these animal products
and the broader issue of
land use and how we’re
managing land use
in a changing climate.
If we focus purely
on climate change
greenhouse gases without
looking at land use,
including beef cattle
grazing and other forms
of livestock grazing,
then we’re still going to
have problems
further down the track.

In his upcoming paper,
“Deforestation and
land degradation in
Queensland, the culprit,”
Mr. Bisshop concludes
that halting livestock
farming in Australia
would have the following
highly beneficial effects:

Our heartfelt thanks,
Dr. Clive McAlpine
and Gerard Bisshop
for your comprehensive
research that further
demonstrates that
livestock farming
must be halted now
so that we can heal and
restore planet Earth
to her natural order.
May humankind quickly
awaken and adopt
the nature-supporting
and life-affirming
organic vegan diet.

For more details
on Dr. McAlpine,
please visit
www.GPEM.UQ.edu.au/Clive-McAlpine

Thank you for joining us
today on Planet Earth:
Our Loving Home.
Enlightening Entertainment
is next, following
Noteworthy News.
Through
compassionate living
may our world soon cool
and return to splendid
harmony and balance.

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